Claire Seeber - Fragile Minds

‘Nutters, no? Any other developments?’ Silver folded the letter and sat opposite his boss.

‘I’ve just found out that there was some sort of tip-off on the Friday morning; some bird rang to say there was going to be a “major incident southeast of Oxford Street”. If the press get hold of that, we are for the fucking high jump.’

‘Who dealt with the call?’

‘It was passed over to SO15, but the operator thought it was a hoax. Said the woman was slightly hysterical and she thought she was a crazy. And fucking Explosives are taking forever, and they’re so reticent to actually confirm anything, it’s doing my head in.’ Malloy fiddled with his Police Benevolent Fund paper-clip box in a way that suggested he wanted to slam it through the wall. He was highly agitated; more so than Silver remembered seeing him. ‘The bank wants to sue, the building firm are terrified they’re going to lose everything and British Gas are cacking themselves. Plus we’ve hardly managed to retrieve any CCTV footage at all, surprise fucking surprise. So far only one of the cameras that survived the blast seems to have even been switched on. I wonder why the fuck we bother really.’

Malloy dropped the paper-clip box and opened a DVD package on his desk, fiddling with his laptop for a minute, his stubby fingers clumsy on the keys, swearing quietly. ‘Christ. Technology. Makes me feel prehistoric. Right, here we go.’

The picture was visible now.

‘See, this little thing arrives at the Academy around 6.47.’

Silver watched a short teenage girl in a beanie hat enter via the front stairs, holding a gym bag. At 6.49 another taller woman, using a stick, walking as quickly as her limp allowed, came out and, standing at the top of the Academy stairs, made two calls, scanning the square as she did so. Then she went back into the building.

‘Tessa Lethbridge possibly? TBC. About five minutes later, the girl comes back outside, apparently to have a cigarette. Then this courier bike arrives,’ Malloy pointed at the screen, ‘and hands her this package; she goes back inside at 7.03.’

Silver found the flickering footage made him feel almost seasick.

‘Now look.’ At 7.08 a white car drove up, an old Golf, stopping outside the Academy, the driver apparently on a mobile phone.

‘Who’s that?’

‘No fucking reg of course, from this angle.’ Malloy cracked his knuckles. ‘But we need to identify him.’

Two minutes later a couple of builders in hard hats and yellow high-visibility jackets walked past the Academy, presumably heading for the Hotel Concorde building site in the adjacent corner.

On the other side of the road, a figure in a full-length burqa pushed an empty pushchair to the edge of the pavement, then began to cross the road. Silver found he was riveted despite his slight nausea. A car passed through frame, then a black Range Rover. The figure in the Golf saw the girl come out of the Academy doors again, holding up a hand in greeting as she ran down the stairs to the pavement, and then a figure follow behind her, but before their identity was revealed, a double-decker bus pulled in front of the camera, obscuring any view.

Another thirty seconds: and the picture went white.

‘What the hell—’ Silver sat back, intensely frustrated, as if he’d just missed the end of his favourite soap opera.

‘Exactly. What the hell? The only people visible to us in the square and they hardly look like your typical group of fundamentalists do they?’

‘Except burqa-girl.’

They replayed the video. This time Silver noticed the way the girl smoking a cigarette outside of the Academy, who had accepted the courier’s parcel, was pacing back and forth as she waited. He watched again as the woman in the burqa seemed to react to something behind her.

‘Of course, burqa-girl might be totally unlinked.’ Malloy scratched his head, his grey crew-cut like burnt stubble in a field. ‘It’s just she seems obvious to me. Why’s the pushchair empty? It’s just a foil, surely. But Counter Terrorism disagree. And upstairs, they’re so fucking paranoid about inciting religious hatred at the moment, they won’t say boo to a goose, which don’t help.’

‘But then,’ Silver rubbed his face wearily, ‘there’s no actual evidence from any of that, that any of them are directly linked to the explosion.’

‘No, of course. But what the fuck were they up to?’ Malloy slammed the laptop lid shut with a thump. ‘Strike ’em off the list, and I’ll be happy. We need to find all of them: the courier bike and the bloke in the car, burqa-girl, and the dancer. And fucking pronto. Christ, Joe,’ he stood up and then sat again. ‘We’ve got fourteen dead, the fucking world’s media breathing down our necks, not to say the Commissioner and everyone at County Hall. I’m setting you up a new team; take Roger Okeke and Tina Price for now.’

Silver felt the surge of adrenaline that came with a new investigation. Okeke was good; young and baying for blood; Price was new but came with good reviews from Southampton. And now Kenton seemed back on track after her initial shock. It was shaping up to be a nice little team. Except, perhaps, for Craven.

‘While we wait for Explosives to pull their heads out of their tiny little arses, we need to identify who this little lot are,’ Malloy’s blue eyes were burning, ‘and what the fuck they were up to before they got blown to kingdom come.’

Silver felt enthused for the first time in weeks.

‘Get on with it, Joe.’ Malloy’s attention was already distracted by an email. ‘And take the CCTV footage with you. You need to liaise with Counter Terrorism. I need fucking results, and I need ’em yesterday.’

Five days on from the bombing, the phones in the office still rang incessantly: frantic relatives who hadn’t seen loved ones for weeks or even months and were now beginning to panic. The vast divisions of family became more obvious at times like these, Silver knew; loved ones ignored for years suddenly became the world’s nearest and dearest. The help lines were so busy they kept jamming, and eventually some of the Traffic team had to be seconded in to answer calls.

Lessons had been learnt from 7/7 and the chaos that had ensued then, but for the Met, a disaster like this was still a nebulous mass that was hard to manage. They had to think on their feet; very often, frustratingly, they had to chase their own tails.

When Silver returned from Malloy’s office, Kenton was filling in the whiteboard at the end of the room with today’s date and updating the lists.

MISSING, PRESUMED DEAD

Silver called Kenton over.

‘How are you?’

‘Fine, sir.’ She practically stood to attention. He grinned. He liked this girl; despite her dodgy hair, she was as solid as her stocky frame; diligent – with fire in her belly.

‘Here’s some CCTV footage of the bombing. I think you should take a look, if you can cope with it? See if you recognise anyone.’

She paled slightly, but nodded at the same time. ‘Sure.’

‘Did you see Merryweather?’

‘Not yet.’

‘Well. The facility is there if you need it. Don’t forget.’

‘Thanks.’

‘By the way. Misty Jones.’ Silver straightened his cuff with nonchalance. ‘The girl you were going to Crime Live! about. Have you got details of whoever reported her missing?’

‘Girl called Lucie Duffy, I think.’ Kenton frowned. ‘Flatmate, and yeah. Everything filed in the A drive, under Contacts.’

In the safety of his own office, Silver called the mobile number listed. A girl answered sotto-voce, piano music thumping in the background; he explained who he was.

‘I’m in rehearsal, I can’t really talk now,’ she murmured.